


Forged Into Something New

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Series: Spider-Verse 2: Into the Devil-Verse [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Cyborg Matt Murdock, Earth-14512, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), SP//drverse, Slightly-Panicked Mentor Matt Murdock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23052478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: The first time Peni saw Daredevil’s face without the mask was precisely six minutes after she returned from her adventure in Miles’s universe.
Relationships: Peni Parker & Matt Murdock, Peni Parker & Spider
Series: Spider-Verse 2: Into the Devil-Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1440463
Comments: 16
Kudos: 171





	Forged Into Something New

The first time Peni saw Daredevil’s face without the mask was precisely six minutes after she returned from her adventure in Miles’s universe. The portal set her and Them the spider down very gently on a rooftop five blocks from the lab. That would be nothing if they still had the SP//dr mecha, but they didn’t. They were just an eleven-year-old girl and a radioactive spider. Leaping across rooftops in a single bound was definitely out of the question. On the bright side, she had her cell phone in her backpack. On the less bright side, none of the outlets in Miles’s universe fit the plug on her charging cord, so the phone was dead. Also the roof access door of the building she was standing on was locked.

With a sigh, she plopped down onto the roof, criss-cross applesauce, with Them cradled in her hands, and prepared to wait. Someone would find her eventually — they always did, even when she wanted to be alone.

Well. Alone from a certain point of view — with Them, she was never alone, but the psychic link between them meant it didn’t feel like being together with someone else either. It was more like being together with herself.

Them noticed before she did, clambering out of her hands and up onto the top of her head. When Peni stood she could see a streak of brown and black arcing over the skyline towards them at top speed. He looked a little like he could be a Spider-person, she thought with an odd sort of pride. It wasn’t, though – only one hero wore those colors. It was Daredevil for sure.

His final landing was a neat little leap that left the two of them about a foot apart. There was an efficiency to it that Peni liked – mathematic, precise. While she was thinking this, Daredevil tugged back his cowl, revealing bright red hair, and wide, panicked blue eyes. Then, before Peni had a chance to really take him in, he’d crushed her to his chest in a hug. It felt... Good. Peni hugged back.

“Tadaima,” she mumbled into his chest.

Daredevil exhaled sharply, almost a laugh but not quite. His hands were shaking where they clutched at her.

“Okaeri,” he said back automatically, before launching into a stammered outburst. “I didn’t, I couldn’t hear you, I thought. I thought. Are you ok? Is your spider ok?”

At that, he pulled back, hands on Peni’s shoulders, and started patting her over — upper arms, cheeks, forehead — like the kinds of nervous mothers Peni saw on old holo-shows sometimes. His face was pointed towards her, but his eyes didn’t track the places his hands were moving. They didn’t track at all, actually, which was when the thought occurred to her — _oh, he’s blind_.

“I’m ok,” she said at last, remembering his question. “Them and I both are. We lost SP//dr though.”

“How?” demanded Daredevil. “What happened? Where— where did you go...?”

Peni bit her lip.

“It’s… A long story,” she admitted.

Daredevil barked out a laugh and gestured at the skyline around them.

“I’ve got time.” His face gentled suddenly. “Unless you want to get back to your aunt and uncle first, of course.”

Peni thought about the lab. She thought about school. She thought about her friends who understood her, out there in the multiverse but too far to touch.

“I don’t want to go back yet,” she admitted to Daredevil. “Is that ok?”

“It’s always ok.”

So they settled down together, seated on the roof ledge, legs dangling between the bars of the railing, and Peni told Daredevil all about the portals, about the other Aunt May and Miles and the Kingpin. He listened attentively, and Peni took the time to study his expressions – so much easier to read without the mask. There was a telling crinkle between his brows and a tightness to the corner of his mouth when she talked about glitching. And she could tell he was only barely holding back a smile when she described Noir and the Rubick’s cube.

“And then Them and I jumped into the portal and dropped down on the roof here,” Peni finished, kicking her legs aimlessly.

“Well,” said Daredevil with a wry smile. “Sounds like you had quite the adventure.”

“Um.” She paused, not sure how to continue. “Mr. Daredevil...?”

“Matt. You can call me Matt,” he said, holding out a gloved hand.

Peni reached out and shook it.

“Matt,” she began again. “Is it… Could you maybe not tell Aunt May and Uncle Ben about this?”

He froze up. In Peni’s experience, adults usually froze up when they didn’t want to tell you no but knew they had to. Things would be— they’d be ok, even if he did tell. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Aunt May and Uncle Ben, not really, even if they weren’t as close as the Peters had seemed with the Aunt May in Miles’s universe.

Actually, it was kind of the reverse, that she wasn’t sure _they_ would trust _her_. Because she didn’t want to never see her new friends again. And she had some plans, some ideas, about maybe… And it was dangerous, that was the thing. Peni didn’t want to end up like the Kingpin, or Doc Ock, didn’t want to hurt other people just to get what she wanted, didn’t want to put her world or Miles’s world or anybody’s world in danger. But she couldn’t bear the thought of completely giving up either.

Her aunt and uncle would want her to give up. They were good people, and practical, and they put the SP//dr mission above everything else. Peni wasn’t like them at all – no matter how much she tried to restrain herself, she felt things very strongly and put those feelings into everything she did. Peni wondered sometimes if her dad had been the same way, but it was tough on both of them to ask Matt about him. Sad, he’d said the first time she mustered up the courage. Her father had been weighed down by the things he saw, by his responsibilities.

“I suppose,” Matt said at last, slowly, “if they didn’t ask me, I wouldn’t have a reason to tell them.”

He didn’t sound very sure, but it was a start. Peni could feel a smile pulling at her mouth. Them clambered down onto Matt’s left hand and hopped a few times, excited. Most people had issues with spiders, but Peni guessed that Matt was used to Them, from being friends with her dad and all. He didn’t swat at Them, just lifted his hand slowly up to face level and sighed.

“Yeah, yeah, pipsqueak, you’re welcome.”

“Can we stay?” she asked, emboldened. “Just a little longer?”

Matt tilted his head. Listening, Peni knew. To the city, to the people in it. Then he nodded.

“It should be fine, for a little while,” he agreed.

“Thank you.”

Them danced back over to Peni’s shoulder and Matt dropped his hand.

“I suppose I might as well get comfortable,” he said. “These can get annoying.”

He tugged off his gloves and tossed them down next to him, revealing a flesh-and-blood left arm and a cybernetic right one. At first, Peni was more fascinated with the cyber.

“Can I…?” she asked, tapping it.

Matt stretched his arm across his chest, surrendering it to her examination, palm up. There was a familiar maker’s mark right at the heel of his hand, on the opposite side as his thumb, but even without it Peni would have recognized the craftsmanship. Swallowing, she turned Matt’s arm over gently to study the top, tracing the maze of circuits on his forearm – enclosed beneath a smooth translucent casing and glowing red – with her fingertips. She could feel her dad there, in the work, the way she always had – with the SP//dr mecha and everything else he’d left her. Seeing it so soon after loosing the mecha and after mentioning him to Miles…

She didn’t cry, but it was close. The tears made everything look fuzzy and blended, like watercolors. Peni swallowed, and swallowed again, and they didn’t fall.

“My dad made this?” she asked when the lump in her throat finally went away.

Matt nodded, and smiled. It was a tiny smile. A sad one.

“Yeah,” he told her, and flexed the fingers of his cyber-hand. “He made it for me, when I was an idiot and ruined my arm. My right leg is the same.”

Rolling up Matt’s sleeve showed that the cyber extended to his elbow. Peni hummed, and spent a long time studying her father’s work. He let her do it with complete patience, even though she knew his shoulder was probably getting sore from holding his arm in the same position for so long. When she was done, Peni tapped his metal wrist with her nails twice, a quiet _clack-clack_ , and Matt shifted his arm back to his side, rolling his shoulder.

“It’s good work,” Matt said. “Your aunt and uncle fix it up for me sometimes, but the base is still what he built. Even with how rough I am on it.”

“The mecha— my mecha, he built that for me too,” admitted Peni. “I didn’t even know him. But he made it, just in case. Because I’m still too small to reach the controls on the one he used. And I…”

Lost it.

Matt knew that was what she meant. He slung his left arm around her in a half-hug, and she leaned into it.

“He left the blueprints for it,” he said, very certain. “You can rebuild it. Make it your own. You have the same gift he had. He’d be proud.”

The words gave her enough comfort that she could pat his arm and lean out of the embrace.

“I will,” she decided. “I’ll rebuild it.”

Matt nodded and retracted his arm, then ran his hand through his hair. As he did, a sparkle caught Peni’s eye and dragged her attention at last to his non-cyber arm. When he rested that hand flat on the roof again, she saw that the sparkle came from a ring – a dark silver one with hints of gold and a wavy row of glowing gemstones. Hoshi-no-tama, she realized, enough of them to make the ring very expensive. It sat on the ring finger of Matt’s left hand. She tapped his pinkie finger, and he slid his hand closer for her.

“You’re married?” she asked Matt, tracing a finger over the design of the ring.

“Once,” he said lightly — it was a tone Peni recognized from herself, one that meant he didn’t want to talk because it hurt.

Still, he didn’t draw his hand away. Let her keep studying the ring.

“Did they die?” she wondered very quietly, thinking of her father.

Matt tipped his head forward, drew both his hands into his lap.

“No. He’s still out there. He’s just... Things didn’t work out. But maybe I’ll take you to meet him someday.” He turned his face in her general direction again and smiled. “I think you’d like each other.”

“So you’re divorced,” Peni concluded.

“Mmm… Yeah,” admitted Matt, sheepishly.

“But you still love him.”

Matt froze, just for a second, then laughed quietly.

“Yes,” he told her. “Yes, I do. I didn’t realize I’d become so transparent in my old age.”

It was one of those self-deprecating old people jokes. Peni didn’t like it very much.

“Why don’t you just go talk to him?” she asked.

Daredevil was good – so Matt was good. And if he loved someone, they had to be good too. That didn’t always mean they’d love him back. But they should.

Matt sighed.

“It’s his choice too,” he reminded her. “And if he’s better for not seeing me, then he won’t. I can still feel him. That’s enough.”

Peni knew Matt could hear pretty much anything. But that wasn’t like being _with_ someone. She always had Them with her, but who did he have when he left the battles they fought together? Who did he have when he took off his mask and stopped being Daredevil and was just Matt? Maybe at one time he’d had her dad. But he didn’t anymore, which was enough to stop any dumb angry feelings about him knowing her dad when she hadn’t. She at least had some school acquaintances, and Aunt May and Uncle Ben.

But Matt had taken off his mask in front of her. Because he was so worried about her. So maybe she could be his friend outside of the mask, too. She wanted to ask if that was ok, but didn’t. Them climbed into her palm, comforting.

“The sun’s setting,” Peni said instead.

She wasn’t sure if Matt could tell that or not, but she felt like she ought to say. He smiled, leaned back on his hands and tipped his face into the last red rays of light.

“What does it look like?” he asked.

Peni thought about that for a long time.

“Like the whole city’s made of fire opals,” she decided at last. “Like someone stretched a purple blanket over the top of the world and we’re all in a blanket fort. Like everything’s being heated up to forge into something new.”

Matt closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds about right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the spider's name is Them, no I'm not taking critiques at this time. It sounds like there's at least some consensus its name is SP//dr, but that's also the name of the mecha, the name of the company that MADE the mecha, and Peni and the spider's superhero name for when they're IN the mecha, and having it be the spider's name too is just way too confusing.
> 
> As for the hoshi-no-tama thing... Idk, I'm a dweeb and I thought it seemed like a fitting name for a kind of gem/crystal that glows (which you like, straight up have to have in the funky futuristic cyberpunk world that is SP//drverse) - a hoshi-no-tama is a glowing gem or pearl that's carried by a kitsune (Japanese fox spirit). Since from what I've seen/read, Peni's New York seems a little San Fransokyo-ish, I figured the allusion would make sense.


End file.
